Tag Archives: CEQA

The homeless Navigation Center that Aaron Peskin proposed for a North Beach parking lot has led to a power struggle between the supervisor and his longtime political foe, Mayor Ed Lee, who wants to use the site for affordable housing.

Peskin’s Navigation Center would likely interfere with the 178-unit development that’s scheduled to break ground next year at 88 Broadway, now a city-owned parking lot just off the Embarcadero. And last week a sympathetic constituent gave Peskin ammunition that could help him forestall the project, making room for his temporary homeless facility…

One North Beach resident, Marc Bruno, filed an appeal with the city Planning Department to stall the development because it would eliminate 180 parking spaces, which he says would create traffic congestion.

Bruno, who describes himself a fervent supporter of Peskin, told The Chronicle he is also concerned the affordable housing units, which would go to low-income seniors, families and formerly homeless people, wouldn’t serve “the poorest of the poor” in his neighborhood…(more)

More advances in feeding people (though in this case not for free): A reader reports construction is advancing swiftly at the Grocery Outlet planned for the former DeLano’s market on South Van Ness Avenue between 23rd and 24th streets. This was approved ages ago, but it seems things are getting underway.

On the other hand, the city seems to be going through a bit of indecision…

the city is considering the impact of big housing projects on their surroundings, and two of those big projects now have to wait for the city to do so…(more)

For years, the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club has been part of a progressive environmental movement. The Club has worked on clean energy, better transit, and sustainable development – and has opposed giant, out-of-control projects like the Wall on the Waterfront. It’s worked with tenant advocates on affordable housing. The influential Club slate card typically endorses the same candidates as the Milk Club, the Tenants Union, and the Bay Guardian.

But for the past couple of years, developers and their allies have been trying to take over the chapter and change its politics. They want a more growth-friendly board that will support market-rate housing development and big commercial projects – and they want the club’s endorsement to go to developer-friendly candidates.

While the individual candidates have been vague about their “urbanist” agenda, their sponsoring organization promotes an explicit platform of weakening environmental controls on real-estate development in the city.

The YIMBY Party was formed this year by Sonja Trauss, who previously created the SF Bay Area Renter Federation (SF BARF). Trauss and her cohort have a simple solution to the housing crisis: Build more luxury housing. Last year, Trauss told 48 Hills:

New housing is expensive, because it’s new, and SF has tons of rich people. It’s appropriate to build new, expensive housing for rich people in expensive neighborhoods. Sierra Club (and No wall on the waterfront) are just rich people using their political capital to block housing in their fancy neighborhoods.

Trauss, whose crazy comments about the Mission helped delay construction of a big project on South Van Ness, is not running for the Sierra Club leadership this year. Nor is her former colleague, Donald Dewsnup, who has been charged with voter fraud. Instead, Trauss’s new YIMBY Party is running a slate of lesser-known allies who all recently joined the Sierra Club with the express purpose of taking over the local chapter…

The YIMBY effort to take over the local Sierra Club is being countered by a volunteer effort of club members who seek to protect the club’s independence and progressive record. If you’re a Sierra Club member, you can get more information here.

Dense development is a developer’s wet dream. People who want to retain their privacy, and views, and build solar powered self-efficient homes prefer lower, less dense housing with shade free roofs.

Build your dense cities connected to desert-array power grid systems, on higher, more stable ground, up near route 5 so you can step off the train onto your bicycle and whiz home after your commute from LA or Sacramento.

San Francisco has a history and a reputation to maintain. People who don’t like it should go build their urban vision concept somewhere else and make a history of their own.

A 395-unit housing project, one of the biggest ever proposed in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, won final approval at the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday in a contentious three-hour hearing. Opposition to the project underscored continued backlash against development in the area, which has seen a building boom with over 3,000 units approved or in the pipeline following the 2009 Eastern Neighborhoods Plan.

The Board of Supervisors voted 9-1 to uphold the environmental review of the project, comprised of two buildings at 901 16th St. and 1200 17th St., from developers Walden Development and the Prado Group. The Board rejected an environmental appeal from neighbors of the project who opposed its size and also alleged that the city didn’t properly study the project’s environmental impacts on the community. The decision affirmed a previous Planning Commission approval of the project.

Opponents of the project said it would exacerbate overcrowded streets with new residents’ cars, demolish 109,000 square feet of existing existing light industrial space that could potentially house artists and damage views and open space.

“The environmental review for this project is inadequate and fails to accurate analyze cumulative impacts,” said Alison Heath, a local resident and member of community group Grow Potrero Responsibly, who appealed the project, at the hearing.

But Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the lone vote rejecting the project’s environmental review, criticized the city’s Planning Department for not fully studying the project’s impact on the area and said the department had to do better in assessing future projects.

The meeting was also marked by an unusual moment between the developer and Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents Portrero Hill and had worked on the project’s review for years. Cohen was ultimately recused from the vote following an exchange with developer Josh Smith of Walden Development, where she called for more concessions to fund the nearby Jackson Park… (more)

Statement on the basis for rezoning PDR to UMU: is this what Peter is referring to?

“Let’s take it back to the Eastern Neighborhood Plan rezoning. Adopted in 2008, after 10 years of community conversation. The the basis of the plan was to protect industrial space, PDR. The zoning at the time was from the 1950’s. It was mushy. It allowed office as a right. It allowed housing as a right. It allowed (4:08:56 ???) housing as conditional use. It allowed retail as a right. And there was a ton of land use conflicts going on as land uses were moving next to each other and causing conflict.

We recognized the need to protect PDR jobs, blue collar jobs,. We recognized the need for housing and community benefits. And housing in concentrated areas that you could provide the transit and the parks and the child care in consolidated ways rather than disparately over a large area.

And so the Eastern Neighborhoods plan was that compromise. Half of the land that was zoned industrially became zoned PDR. Much more restrictive. No office was allowed. No retail was allowed. No housing was allowed. And the other half was approved as urban mixed use which isa neighborhood that allowed PDR, allowed some office, allowed retail, and allowed housing as of right for the first time, and also generated from the housing use a higher percentage of affordable housing than required elsewhere in the city, and also generated code benefits throughout the Eastern Neighborhoods benefit fee that was brand new of which we generate over 50 million dollars to date revenue that would not have been generated without the plan.”

RELATED: Many stories on this one, from Pokeman to serious.

Slip of the tongue: The art of squeezing developers for community benefits is nothing new in politics, especially when today’s hot real estate market gives elected officials leverage to extract cash for everything from affordable housing to parks…

When environmentalists wade into political contests, they’re almost always outspent by big business.

But that’s not the case with Measure AA, a $12 annual parcel tax that will appear on the June 7 ballot in all nine Bay Area counties to fund wetlands restoration and flood control projects around San Francisco Bay’s shoreline.

Environmental groups have linked arms with big business this time around, in essence becoming part of the Goliath in the David vs. Goliath contest. The coalition is overpowering anti-tax groups in fundraising by a huge margin, according to campaign spending reports released Friday.

Through last week, the Yes on AA campaign had raised $2.3 million, while opponents have not formed a campaign committee and are relying on volunteer efforts. The yes campaign has hired heavyweight political consultants, conducted professional polling, sent out glossy mailers and begun airing ads on every major Bay Area TV station.

If approved by two-thirds of all the voters in the nine counties combined, the new tax would raise $500 million over the next 20 years to build levees and restore thousands of acres of wetlands and tidal marshes as a buffer to storm surges and floods in every Bay Area county… (more)

We hear that the $12 parcel tax is the first tax the SF Bay Authority plans on and they need billions of dollars. There are plans for a sales tax increase, a 10 cent per gallon gas tax increase, higher car license fees, and a number of other taxes and fees this non-elected, non-government entity wants to extract out of us in the name of cleaning the bay over the next few years.

For this and many other reasons we oppose this tax and hope that other people realize the gentrification effects that increasing taxes have on the area. Most people focus only on the rising costs of housing but, housing is only one element of the gentrification problem. We are looking at 100s of dollars of increased fees and taxes over the next few years. The opposition to this tax wants to limit the number of bodies that can tax us.

The Golden State Warriors will delay construction of their Mission Bay arena by at least a year, hoping to move to San Francisco by the fall of 2019, said Warriors chief operating officer Rick Welts last month in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News. Welts’ announcement came after the Mission Bay Alliance filed a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) suit against the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure (OCII) and the City and County of San Francisco in Sacramento Superior Court in early January.The Alliance filed a separate suit against the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in Alameda Superior Court late last year.

In the CEQA suit, the Alliance argues that OCII, the City, and numerous municipal agencies, including the San Francisco Planning Department and Municipal Transportation Authority (SFMTA), violated CEQA and the Mission Bay South Redevelopment Plan by not considering other locations for the arena and responding poorly to traffic, air quality, and noise concerns. In the suit against UCSF, the Alliance asserts that Chancellor Sam Hawgood acted illegally in reaching an agreement with the Warriors to provide land to the team. According to the Alliance, Hawgood signed a contract without approval from the UC Board of Regents that’ll pose serious health and safety dangers to Bay Area residents… (more)

he Mission Bay Alliance appears to be the undefeated Warriors’ toughest opponent this season, at least off the court.

The group, led by former UC San Francisco officials, filed an appeal with The City late Friday challenging the certification of the final environmental impact report for the team’s proposed project in Mission Bay, which includes an 18,000-seat arena, offices and open space at an 11-acre site at Third and 16th streets.

The appeal highlights numerous concerns with the project, namely that events at the arena will create traffic gridlock that won’t be eased by some $60 million in transit improvements planned for the area. The project site is located across the street from UCSF’s three new hospitals, and just south of AT&T Park and the San Francisco Police Department’s new headquarters.

“We are appealing a city committee’s rubber-stamp approval of a disastrous project that will gridlock city streets, pollute Mission Bay neighborhoods, cost the taxpayers millions and threaten live-saving emergency care,” Bruce Spaulding, a consultant for the Mission Bay Alliance, said in a statement.

City agencies have signed off on numerous stages of the project this month, including the certification of its final EIR by the Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure, the Planning Commission’s approval for the two six- to 11-story office buildings and 546 parking spaces also planned for the site, and the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee that unanimously supported sending the project to the full board next month… (more)